Letters From Elders to Us All: Steve Brown

Many years ago--actually decades
ago now--a friend gifted me a button with the saying “Gentleness is Strength.”
I didn’t understand. She explained I was gentle, but there was an underlying
determination (most of my life I’ve labeled it perseverance) that shone through
the gentleness.

A few years
later, my sister introduced me to the music of Holly Near (http://www.hollynear.com/), witha “live” album. I loved it, especially a song
called “Gentle, Angry People.” I even wrote an essay in my book, “Movie Stars
and Sensuous Scars: Essays on the Journey from Disability Shame to Disability
Pride” (https://www.amazon.com/Steven-E.-Brown/e/B004H9QX7Y/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0),
with that title. In the introduction to that piece, I wrote “I became more
convinced each day that people with disabilities could not obtain our freedom unless
every other oppressed group also found liberation.”

Two years
before the initial publication of this essay I joined my colleagues at the independent
living program in Norman, OK in walking out from our jobs (an essay about the
walkout is also in “Movie Stars”). This was easily the most radical action I’ve
ever taken: abandoning a job, while the father of a young child—and it also
became my most critical learning experience—because I learned I possessed
skills and inner resources that enabled me to survive—and eventually thrive.

I’ve been
reminded of these thoughts and experiences—and many more—in recent months. I
find myself returning often to the past—mine, and history in general—perhaps
not surprising—for a historian. I watch in horror as the prospects of decades
of hard work is being systematically torn apart—at least in theory, we have to
wait a bit to see what reality will bring—but we know, at the very least, that generations
of advocacy to include more in our body politic and socio-cultural-economic
environment than white, male, non-disabled property-owners, is being
challenged.

I watch in
horror as well as many of my compatriots viciously attack those who are
viciously attacking them. While I understand it, I’m not happy about it,
because I believe what we put into the world returns in some way from the
world. I also watch in amazement as people forget—no, that’s not right—they don’t
seem to have learned, history. We believe that what’s happening now is new: that,
for example, people with disabilities have never before been attacked, maimed
or killed. Yet, we have centuries of evidence that we have. We believe racial
attacks are more vicious now than ever, yet forget somehow the ignominious
founding of this country on the bodies of slaves. Even the scales may not be
that different. Millions have been killed, mutilated, sterilized, and
ostracized over thousands of years of human history because somebody had the
power to do that.

One
difference today though is the role of social and other media and our ability
to communicate instantaneously. We think something in 2015, “happened back
then.” No wonder we don’t have a sense of history.

All this
comes up for me in many ways. My friend, Naomi Ortiz, of the wonderful blog, “Self-Care
for Social Justice” (http://www.selfcareforsocialjustice.com/),
wrote to a bunch of people not long after the 2016 elections. The email began,
“Dear Elders. Many of you have been able to sustain doing this work because
you’ve created tools and practices and the faith which has allowed you to
weather a lot. So, I thought I’d reach out and ask if any of you are interested
in sharing advice, thoughts, U-tube videos, readings, jokes, perspectives,
poems and/or truths that are speaking to you at this moment.”

I’ve thought about this request pretty much every day since
it arrived. When it first crossed my desk one of my reactions was Naomi herself
writes beautiful blogs and several that she wrote after the election helped
sustain me.

Right after the election I thought about the days when Reagan
was elected President and as I write this I’m thinking about Nixon. When Nixon
was first elected President, in 1968, I was a teenager, still in high school.
By the time he resigned in 1974, I was in graduate school, had been an
anti-Vietnam war protestor, and someone who had taken those protests to the
streets, both in the college town I lived in during the late 1960s/early 1970s
and in Washington, D.C. I wrote quite a lot about this time and its impact on
me in my memoir “Surprised to be Standing: A Spiritual Journey” (https://www.amazon.com/Steven-E.-Brown/e/B004H9QX7Y/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0).

When Reagan was elected in 1980, I
was close to finishing graduate school, with a doctoral degree in history. My
final decision to become a historian jelled after the 1971 Vietnam War protests
in Washington, when I decided I wanted to learn how to do revolution right—because
watching and participating in these protests didn’t resonant with me for
long-term change. And…yet…a President resigned! What more could we have hoped
for? As it turns out, a lot more: in retrospect, that may have been not only
the highlight of those protests, but the beginning of the end…though we hardly
sensed that at that moment--because we, the protestors, thought we’d won and
many of us moved onto other things, while the “establishment” dug in and retrenched.

Learning the hard way, in the early
1980s, that I had a disability, well, I always knew that at some personal level
but now I learned it at the social and environmental levels as well when I
experienced my own personal brand of oppression, while I sought a job, any job,
in my chosen field. I’ve written lots about this in both books mentioned. But,
as is sometimes the case, my oppression also turned into a great opportunity,
as I found myself in the midst of the disability rights movement, combining my
passions for history, human rights and culture.

I’ve experienced an amazing journey
in the decades since Reagan’s election. I’ve worked with and met incredible
people from all the over the world. I’ve had a chance to travel and to work in
fields that engage and enhance my passions. I’ve been married to a wonderful
woman, who both manages to keep me grounded and encourages me to fly. I’ve had
a series of painful (in the most literal physical sense) disability
experiences, and managed to become healthier in my 50s than I may have been
since my disability first showed up when I was five. I have a daughter, who
often these days tells me how much she appreciates being dragged to disability
(and other) rights meetings and events when she was younger. And we have two
smart, engaging, challenging grandchildren.

I reflect today, in my mid-60s, both
feeling and not feeling like an “elder.” I’m often reminded of the disability
rights advocates I “grew up” with in 1980s Oklahoma. Our personalities, experiences,
disabilities, cultural backgrounds, and approaches were quite different. Yet,
our group stuck together, and facilitated great change. Why? Not because we
were different, but because we recognized and appreciated our distinctions. And
because, not being perfect, during those times we didn’t appreciate each other
so much we were still able to acknowledge the gifts each of us brought to the
table, or the streets, or the media, or wherever else we were able to be
effective. As I write, I’m reminded of a question I often got in those days,
which was something like how can someone become an effective advocate. My
answer might have included strategy suggestions, but in the end it was always
something like figuring our “whatever works.” This is why I have always been an
ADAPT (http://www.adapt.org/), supporter;
as a group ADAPT does know how to do revolution right.

I am happy many people are still
taking it to the streets, but for reasons that are not only physical, I don’t
see that as the best role for myself these days. So, what is? Well, I’ve re-committed
to my own writing, and have several works in various stages, from beginning to
revising to finally figuring out (I think) a way to approach a book I’ve been
wanting to write for many years now, but which never felt quite right.

A few years ago, a colleague asked
me what drove my work, what was my overall goal. Although I didn’t answer her
well the moment she asked (I’m a writer, I like revision:), later I realized
the answer was pretty simple. The mission of the Institute on Disability
Culture (http://www.instituteondisabilityculture.org/),
which Lil and I founded in the early 1990s, still fits all I want to do. It’s
quite simple: “Promoting pride in the history, activities, and cultural identity
of individuals with disabilities throughout the world.” This vision absolutely
sustains me because it, after all these years, still describes what I want to
do.

In addition, to writing, I’ve also
been sustained by music, as I write, Johnny Crescendo (https://www.facebook.com/JohnnyCrescendo),
is singing about dance and romance—fitting one of my favorite quotes: “If I
can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” My friends, many of whom
I’ve met in person, and many of whom I haven’t--thanks to the wonder of social
media, not only sustain and encourage me, but give me hope because of all the
amazing activities they are involved in and producing, including books, music,
movies, dance, videos, performance, and innovative ways of approaching the
world. People of all ages are doing all of these activities, but I am
especially hopeful because of the plethora of younger folks who are challenging
and protesting the currency of the times. As a grandfather, this gives me hope
for the world our grandchildren will see.

What else sustains
me? I guess it’s what always has: learning. For someone else, it will be
different. But I love to learn, more than to teach. Yet, the two do go hand in
hand and as I move forward in 2017, I plan to continue to do both—in ways that
I hope will help to sustain not only myself, but others as well, because the
most practical advice I can offer anyone is to live your own truth, to be
willing to share it but also to be willing—maybe even eager—to embrace learning
about someone else’s truth, because the best way to sustain each other is to
support one another—and if someone else’s truth rubs us roughly or even more,
causes us harm, we must demonstrate, through our truths, why that needs to
change.

The lessons are in the telling
they provide a framework and a dwelling.
We all have so many stories to bear
Cry, laugh, sing, and despair;
how will our children learn and compare
if we're too timid to dare
to raise the flare
share that we care.

Tell your story
Sing your tale
Tell our story
Shout our glory!

We may have to do this over and
over and over again—as people have been doing not only for generations, but for
thousands of millennia, reminding us that while this may be a chaotic,
challenging, even life-threatening time, it is also, in the annals of time,
brief.

2 comments:

Thank you. I needed this. Still hurting, wounded knee/wounded soul with no clemency for Leonard Peltier. I appreciate and desperately need self care or I ll not be able to keep on Adapt-ing, disabled queering, and fighting for freedom 4 indigenous. Air.hugs to.y'all

Yes! Sitting with so much grief and also disappointed/hurting about no clemency for Peltier. Sounds like you know what you need. Self-care starts with honoring our needs. Take good care of yourself. We need you!

About Me

Naomi Ortiz is a writer, poet and visual artist who cracks apart common beliefs and spills out beauty. As a disabled Mestiza living in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, Naomi supports individuals to build bridges through facilitated discussion, art, poetry and reflection, connecting them to their own truths around self-care and living in multiple worlds. Naomi provides individual consultations and is a nationally known speaker and trainer on self-care for activists, disability justice, and intersectionality. Her upcoming book, "Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice" invites and supports readers to explore the relationships between mind, body, spirit, heart and place in order to integrate self-care to survive and thrive. "Sustaining Spirit: Self Care for Social Justice" will be released in 2017.